My Why
I’m a co-founder of KareInn because I want to make a difference. When I left university I wanted a meaningful career. I’m 51 now. I’ve done my share of corporate innovation work for GE, KPMG, Lockheed Martin and other big companies. I am not a former carer like my two other co-founders but it’s time for me to do work that I consider personally and socially redeeming.
Prior to starting KareInn, I was engaged by a firm that delivered incredible digital healthcare solutions. They worked on a digital solution that a person could only get by a doctor’s prescription and was proven in clinical trials to outperform medication in managing a person’s diabetes. However, I discovered this impactful innovation and others like it were not making a difference to the lives of older people. I realised our society’s demographic challenge has been talked about for many years but older people were an afterthought to leading digital innovators. I expect “digital innovators” were focusing on early adopters and people who use mobiles. Even today, in the UK, only 1 in 4 people over 65 have a smartphone so it’s not hard to see why not many solutions were being developed for older people.
However, we believe the immediate opportunity is to empower the people who care for older people and it’s the faster route to driving significant impact rather than design solutions for direct use by older people. Our mission is to provide a better quality of life for older people. We started service by enabling carers in residential care homes to spend more time with residents. Our solution provides care homes with more face-to-face care through the use of digital care plans.
Our solution was co-designed with care homes introduced by my co-founder, John Lanyon. John and I had worked together in the past. He is a former carer for his family, an advisor to the care industry and another person with a personal desire to make a difference. His Founder’s Story is also in our blogs. It was with John’s encouragement based on his knowledge of the market that we formed KareInn.
Our third co-founder, Alex Kenney, was introduced via a mutual friend. Alex is also a former carer for a family member, a medical app developer and another person with a personal desire to improve the quality of life for people later in their life. He brings a strong ethos of “co-design”. Every line of code KareInn develops has been thoroughly considered for the end-user. The tremendous productivity gains that result in more time for carers and residents is a direct result of a very strong understanding of the end-user. His personal story is listed on our blogs.
Jackie Marshall Cyrus is not a co-founder but she is someone who inspires me. I consider Jackie a friend and an informal advisor. Her passion to improve the quality of life for older people is admirable and infectious. She was one of the key people behind Innovate UK’s Long Term Care Revolution. We have different views about the role of care homes but we always find common ground in a dramatic vision for change. Here is Jackie speaking at RBS as part of the Long Term Care Revolution.
Despite our skills in digital innovation, we recognise the care industry is about people.
Our focus is to design technology in a way that enables more human interaction. Technology is a tool in that we use to build trust with care decision-makers for the benefit of older people and their quality of life. We aim to become trusted partners of care decision-makers as they go on a journey of an industry transformation that faces the industry. Business, as usual, is not an option for the industry. If there was ever an example of a “burning platform for change” the adult care industry is it.
Eric.
